The 'Zero Dark Thirty' connection
A
considerable amount of about more than two-third of the amount of screen time
of the 2012 American film directed by Kathryn Bigelow, 'Zero Dark Thirty' is devoted to the accumulation
of the evidences by the United States of America's defense and intelligence establishment on
the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden and accurately pinpointing his existence to a
fortified hideout in Pakistan. This directorial decision taken at the conception
stage of the film itself, fulfils certain objectives within the constructed
world of the film.
For one, it gives a semblance of credence to
the actual operations of the killing of Osama Bin Laden - a part that forms the rest
of the narrative in the film. Secondly, the film recluses itself from being just
a film about 'the killing of Osama Bin Laden by the US Security and Military
establishment' in the thriller format to being one that is about 'the
circumstances within the US Security and Military establishment that led to the
killing of Osama Bin Laden'. The amount of screen time you give to any aspect
of a film is in direct relation to its
intention.
The intention of 'Uri: The Surgical Strike', a
film that I was forced to watch due to an overwhelming demand within my family,
is seemingly clear in the first part of the film itself, where Indian soldiers
are ambushed by armed separatists in a North-Eastern state of the country. The
Indian Army retaliates in immediate screen time, the planning of the operation
skipped in the screenplay. At the grey border area of the country, inside the deep
jungles, a separatist hideout is wiped out, killing almost all its dangerous inmates.
The military operation ends with the protagonist of the film - the man heading
the operation - killing the leader of the ambushing separatist group in a hand
to hand revenge combat, giving the entire attack a personal touch in its coda. The
message is clear - if any internal terror organization attacks the army, it
shall get back in kind and with interest. This part of the film ends with a
mention by a character whose dialogue suggests that the separatist
organizations have conceded defeat by agreeing to for talk with the Indian
Government. The errant group have been tamed with brute force of the Indian
security establishment - institutionally it would seem.
The world of Joseph Campbell and the family saga
This first part of this film also manages to establish the
protagonist's 'ordinary world', so to say - taking the phrase from American
writer Joseph Campbell who had studied many western mythical stories and as
encapsulated in his book 'A Hero with a Thousand Faces'. Joseph Campbell
suggests that many of the ancient myths have prototype heroes who have similar
journeys in the stories that they are in. Normally, the journey begins with the
establishment of the hero's own normal life, oblivious to the lurking dangers
that the story would pose to him at a later stage.
As the film begins, in 'Uri:
The Surgical Strike', the 'ordinary world' of the protagonist is not as mundane
as one imagines it to be. His normal world involves the successful planning and
execution of military combat operations where he and his team have to dodge
bullets by the whiskers on a regular basis. Joseph Campbell also mentions a
'call to adventure' and the hero's refusal to take up the call, as the next two
steps in the hero's journey. If the 'ordinary world' itself is as action-packed
as shown in the film, what would the intensity of the world that 'calls for
adventure' be?
The hero in 'Uri: The Surgical Strike' demotes
himself from his eventful 'ordinary world' onto a 'mundane world' when he
decides to take up a desk job in the Delhi military establishment of the
Government of India, recusing himself from active combat situations. The
reason - he has to be with his mother in Delhi who is suffering from Alzheimer's
disease. At a meeting that he has with the successful commandos, the Prime
Minister of the country, whose false beard I constantly felt would fall off any
moment, listens and agrees; 'It is necessary to look after one's mother'. Why
is the mother's character in the film a mother and not a wife?
Well, the
transition from serving the motherland to serving the mother would be widely acceptable
to a family audience, as currently both mothers are equally adorable. To
ditch the motherland with an intention to serve an wife, would not probably
have that sort of universal appeal and acceptance. Besides, the Prime Minister's
dialogue in the success party would then probably be, 'It is necessary to
look after one's wife'. Given the current affair scenario and the little
knowledge that we have about our real Prime Minister, such a dialogue would be politically
incorrect and embarrassing for the party that he hails from. So, the mother it is who
would have Alzheimer's disease and not the least, a wife.
The willful abstinence from active combat action
is that period in the film where the hero is in his weakest self. He sheds a a lot of
tears, gulps lots of coffee to get relief from his desk job related fatigue, he
is unsure and hesitant to talk to his girl colleague in his office, he almost baby-sits his young niece and above all he fails to realise that the
nurse appointed by the military establishment to look after his mother is
actually an intelligence agent trying to protect his family.
These are traits
that are in direct antithesis to what is normally considered to belong to a 'strong
masculine hero'. But since Campbell says that such traits are a necessary part
of the hero's journey and his higher growth; and the fact that our hero is
enduring these 'non toxic masculine' characteristics for the love for his adorable
mother, the sympathies certainly is on his side and thus, all is deemed to be well.
It normally takes some screen time for
the true 'call for action' for the hero to come. It certainly does not come to our
hero when he hears the news of a few foreign militants entering a military camp
to attack our sleeping soldiers in the wee hours in the morning. The team that had
successfully conducted the north-east Indian operation earlier in the film, which
also includes the hero's brother-in-law, is sent to neutralize the militants
who are holed up in the military base. But the hero's brother-in-law is killed
in the process - causing considerable grief to the hero and his family. It is
at this point that our hero gets his 'call for action'.
When the military
establishment plans retaliatory strikes on militant camps across the enemy
territory, our man volunteers himself to head the operation. The hero is now back
to being a alfa male. He has to avenge for the sleeping soldiers who have been
killed in Uri, the military and security establishment of the country wants him
to do so. But more importantly strictly going by the timing of his 'call for
action', he has to avenge the death of his bother-in-law. It is the one loss that has caused considerable pain to him and his family.
That is my basic deduction - scratch the surface
and 'Uri: The Surgical Strike' is more
of a family revenge drama rather than a military operation film thriller. This despite a majority of Indians feeling so, in extreme jingoism The
film might not just be about 'how the Indian army retaliated to the Uri
killings by going into the enemy territory to destroy a few militant camps' in
the action thriller format. It could be more about 'how a brilliant army commando
resurrects himself from his willful slumber to avenge the killing of his
brother-in-law and, of course, the sleeping army personnel in a military camp'.
The personal family revenge drama come to a full circle by the end of the
second militant base camp destruction that the group led by the hero is
involved in. The base is in shambles, but the mastermind who had planned the
Uri attack - thus causing the death of his brother-in-law - is still at large.
The hero, all by himself, intelligently traces him to a nearby control room.
The two of them have a serious one to one combat of the Salman Khan kind where
our hero brutally knives the terror mastermind to death. Immediately, he
unmindfully gives a huge victory cry, loud enough to probably be heard by the
rapidly incoming enemy forces. The personal touch given by the protagonist in
the combat witnessed as a coda in the North Eastern region of India shown in
the first part of the film, now makes sense. Revenge has to be personal and
now, it has to be brutal as well.
Not just about the surgical strikes
There is another reason why I deduct that the
film is not just about the surgical strikes that the Indian army had conducted
in enemy territory. If it were, the film would have devoted more screen time to
the attacks themselves, and their preparations. As per the film there are three
or four enemy camps that are attacked with as many contingents. The film, however, just
follows the attacks on the two camps that the hero personally leads. For one,
it is all about the hero's journey, the rest are unimportant side characters
who could be wished away with a dialogue or two.
Secondly, what would be the
scenario if the journey details of the other army contingents too were included
in the film? The film obviously would have been longer in length. All those additional
action sequences would have also need special effects. It would have increased
the budget of the movie, necessitating a salable superstar to be in the film -
which would increase the scale of the film and in turn it's budget.
But
the film has a relative newcomer whose perceived box office return value is not
very high, so the budget had to kept in check. The other way to
incorporate the detailed journeys of the other army contingents involved in the attack is to remove or trim certain existing plot-tracks in
the film. Which other ones could have been given less screen time? For the obvious reasons of losing out on a high degree of
emotional quotient, the hero's mother and his family angle had to
be preserved in the film. The only other major plot-track running
in the film is one where we see high level government personalities causing,
guiding and controlling the surgical strikes.
The character of the Security Advisor to the
Prime Minister is the pivotal character who initiates things within the story; of
course apart from regularly breaking flip phones in bouts controlled anxiety. He has
the personal ear of the highly benevolent Prime Minister, who seems to show a
high degree of concern to all and sundry. Initially into the film, the table
around him has his senior ministerial cabinet colleagues. It
would seem that the Prime Minister takes everyone's opinion into account to
come to a conclusion in such emergency situations, thus living the concept of
'collective responsibility' of the cabinet.
But then ever since the Security Adviser
rejects the suggestion of some senior ministers in a crucial meeting, the cabinet
colleagues of the Prime Minister are relegated into the background. Later when
the surgical strikes are launched, the character playing the Prime
Minister issues orders asking his ministers not to be involved further in the
matter. It thus ensures that they are 'banished' from the film itself. Anyone
who is conversant in Indian politics today and on how the country is run by a
select few at the highest level, would know that this is a classic case of kitsch art
imitating life.
Inside the control room, it the Security Advisor's
show. He is conveniently and ably helped by the female intelligence officer whom we had earlier seen nursing the hero's mother. Now, her role in the control room is to nurse the hero's personal
revenge saga, and of course the army's retaliation. She gives all the intelligence
inputs to the people who matter and is also well conversant with hard brutal
interrogation tactics. She is the 'behind every man there is a woman' types.
That said, it is the Security Advisor who is what Joseph Campbell refers to as
'The Mentor'. He is the guide, the man of wisdom who supports the hero in his
journey.
To facilitate the collection of hard evidences he commissions a
indigenous camera drone that is designed as a bird by a trainee intern in the
nation's prime defense research organization, overriding the lethargic
trainee's boss. It is this bird like drone called 'Garuda' that makes the
difference between success and failure of the surgical strikes - our Security
Advisor is shown being directly responsible for this process.
The man is so
powerful that the Defense Minister and the Chief of Army too look like a junior
artists for most parts of the film. The characters in this plot-track that has Government
personalities controlling the surgical strike look exactly like their real life
counterparts, only the names are different. The rest of the characters in the
film are obviously fictitious - by self declaration as mentioned in a title
card that is placed in the beginning of the film. How apt is this partial
adherence to reality is anyone's guess.
With so much at stake, the all important control
room track having significant characters in them (read the Security
Advisor to the PM and the Prime Minister himself) would not have been deleted
or reduced to make way for enhanced details of the actual preparation and
operation of the surgical strikes - like the one that 'Zero Dark Thirty' has. I am not
making a case that the film should have revealed the actual strategies of the
real surgical strike, even assuming the filmmaker had access to such sensitive
information.
Within the world in which the film operates, there could have been
more authentic ways of depicting the planning and execution of the surgical
strikes - instead of merely banking on
the personal brilliancy of the Security Advisor and his favorite commando, to do
so. 'Zero Dark Thirty' had that authenticity thus creating a feeling it is based on real life facts. These facts could have well been created and scripted for the world that is unfolded within the film.
However one wishes that a film be, it is the way
it is by pure design and purpose. If there are no discussions on the socio-economic
causes to the militancy issue or cross border terrorism; and on the security
lapses or human rights violations that seemingly plague any army, they are simply
not meant to be there. Loosely episodic in nature, 'Uri: The Surgical Strike' might
not be about 'how the Indian military and security establishment planned and executed
surgical strikes in enemy territory as a part of its retaliation to the enemy
terror strikes on its soil', as the film would probably want to suggest.
The film could
well be about 'how a single powerful bureaucrat acting under the benevolence of
an understanding Prime Minister helps the army retaliate against an enemy
terror strike on its soil, and of course in the process how he inadvertently
helps out one commando avenge his personal loss.' There is a world of difference in the
approach between the two premise.
Back to the 'Zero Dark Thirty' connection
In 'Zero
Dark Thirty', one of the central characters is a CIA investigating agent called
Maya. It is her professional obsession with collecting fool proof evidences
that leads the US to track down Osama Bin Laden. Her purpose gets a sharp focus when she herself escapes death in a terror attack; her
colleague and close friend cannot in another. Her obsession to get back at Osama
Bin Laden, becomes that much personal after this point in the script.
But
having done her job in convincing the powers that be in the US establishment
about the existence of Osama in the Pakistani hide out, she takes a back seat
and the institution takes over. So, 'Zero Dark Thirty' does not smell like
a personal revenge film. Within the world that it lives in, the film
convincingly tells us about the power of US military and security establishment;
what it actually is a different matter though.
"Uri:
The Surgical Strike', on the other hand has personal elements up on its
sleeves. The need for a retaliation of the army at an institutional level is
strongly confused with the idea of immediate revenge - at a personal level. Such
a need is projected onto the army and then to the country. Any success of such
an act of revenge also becomes the personal success of the intensely emotional commando,
the mobile breaking Security Advisor of the Prime Minister and thus of the false
bearded Prime Minister himself, by default.
Self
declared 'brutal revenge' by jingoism is something that other revenge sagas in
Indian mainstream films of the past lacked. They are not seen even in the war
films of JP Dutta like 'Border' or in any other of Manoj Kumar's vintage patriotic
films. The Indian film industry, for the purpose of self survival I suspect,
has always been cozying up with the establishment - whatever be the ideology
that controls the establishment. It is just that "Uri: The Surgical
Strike' - like it's theme - is blatant and unapologetic about it.
I guess, that is new India that everyone is
talking about.
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